A Victory, But Little Is Gained
By DARYL G. PRESS and BENJAMIN VALENTINO
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/17/opinion/17press.html?n=Top%2fOpinion%2fEditori\
als%20and%20Op%2dEd%2fOp%2dEd%2fContributors

Published: November 17, 2004

Hanover, N.H. - The textbook urban assault on Falluja reflected well on
the dedication, training and equipment of the American military.
Unfortunately, it has not brought the United States appreciably closer
to achieving its political objectives in Iraq. In fact, history suggests
that America has slim hopes of defeating the insurgency, and that our
best chance for "success" depends on redefining what we would
consider a victory.

American troops killed as many as 1,000 insurgents in Falluja and seized
stocks of weapons and ammunition. But neither guns nor dedicated
fighters are scarce in Iraq. The Pentagon estimates the number of
hard-core enemy fighters to be roughly 10,000 (20,000 if active
sympathizers and covert accomplices are included). And Iraq is awash in
assault rifles, ammunition, rocket-propelled grenades and explosives - the
lifeblood of insurgency. Most troubling, the guerrillas enjoy support from
a
sizable fraction of the population in the Sunni heartland.

While major operations like the attack on Falluja create the appearance
of progress, over the last 60 years major powers have learned repeatedly
that there is virtually no connection between seizing territory and
defeating an insurgency. Insurgents do not seek victory on the
battlefield.

The first rule of insurgency is to avoid large-scale battles with the
government; guerrillas attack on their own timetable against civilians and
isolated military units. Shrewd insurgents concede territory, melt away
when enemy units approach in force, and then snipe, kidnap and bomb
from the shadows. It was no surprise that the insurgents started isolated
actions in Mosul, Samarra and other cities as soon as the attack on
Falluja began.

If seizing cities was the key to success in a counterinsurgency, one might
have expected a French victory after the battle of Algiers in 1957, an
American victory after the defeat of North Vietnamese and Vietcong forces
in Hue in 1968, and a Russian victory over the Chechens after the retaking
of Grozny in 1995. Instead, the French and Americans lost, and the war in
Chechnya drags on.

As T. E. Lawrence famously described it, fighting rebels is "like eating
soup with a knife." Guerrillas do not depend on vulnerable lines of supply
and communication, so counterinsurgents must target them directly, and
even a few thousand armed guerrillas can create chaos in a country of
tens of millions. Guerrillas camouflage themselves among the population;
frequently the only way to distinguish an insurgent from a civilian is when
he (or she) opens fire.

This is why the history of counterinsurgency warfare is a tale of failure.
Since World War II, powerful armies have fought seven major
counterinsurgency wars: France in Indochina from 1945 to 1954, the
British in Malaya from 1948 to 1960, the French in Algeria in the 1950's,
the United States in Vietnam, the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, Israel in
the occupied territories and Russia in Chechnya. Of these seven, four
were outright failures, two grind on with little hope of success, and only
one - the British effort in Malaya - was a clear success.

Many counterinsurgency theorists have tried to model operations on the
British effort in Malaya, particularly the emphasis on winning hearts and
minds of the local population through public improvements. They have not
succeeded. Victory in Malaysia, it appears in retrospect, had less to do
with British tactical innovations than with the weaknesses and isolation of
the insurgents. The guerrillas were not ethnic Malays; they were recruited
almost exclusively from an isolated group of Chinese refugees. The
guerrillas never gained the support of a sizable share of the Malaysians.
Nevertheless, it took the British 12 years to defeat them, and London
ended up granting independence to the colony in the midst of the rebellion.

Paradoxically, it is only some weaker countries that have succeeded in
suppressing rebellions, albeit by unleashing tremendous brutality against
the civilian population. This is the approach that Guatemala adopted in the
late 1970's and early 1980's to crush a growing communist insurgency in
the countryside. Villages were wiped out in a campaign that killed about
200,000 people and made an equal number refugees. Hafez al-Assad of
Syria succeeded with a similarly murderous approach when he crushed
the Muslim Brotherhood rebellion in 1982, as did Saddam Hussein when
he defeated the Shiite uprising in southern Iraq after the Persian Gulf war
in 1991.

America, of course, is not willing to contemplate this level of violence in
Iraq. Furthermore, even unrestrained brutality does not guarantee
success. The Soviet Union killed more than a million people in
Afghanistan, but never broke the will of the insurgents.

Some will insist that the American commanders have a more refined
strategy for defeating the insurgency in Iraq. They plan to rely
increasingly on Iraqi forces, trained by our military, who will have
greater
legitimacy with the population and whose knowledge of the language,
culture and terrain will allow them to do a better job policing the
country.

There is logic to this approach, but it is not new. Hundreds of thousands
of local troops fought alongside the French in Algeria and Indochina.
The Soviets set up a puppet government in Afghanistan. And, of course,
the American policy of "Vietnamization" did not prevent the collapse of
the South Vietnamese government after United States forces withdrew
from the country. In all of these cases, the local forces were corrupt and
inefficient and had dubious loyalty to the occupier. Do we really expect
more from the weak government in Baghdad?

As long as the insurgency rages, it is unlikely that America will achieve
the political goals it set for itself - a unified, democratic Iraq as the
first building block in the broader democratization of the Middle East. In
fact, we must now worry about the emergence of an Iraqi government
dominated by anti-Western jihadist groups, or a perpetual civil war
among the Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish communities that will kill millions
and create fertile ground for terrorist groups like Al Qaeda to recruit,
train and plan.

Given these horrific possibilities, perhaps we should set our goals more
realistically, and focus on the achievable. Some have suggested that we
let Iraq divide itself into independent Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish
countries.
This might avert a prolonged, violent struggle for control of the central
government after the United States withdraws. Still, history - most
recently that of Yugoslavia - suggests that partition is a risky, bloody
business. Millions of people would be forced from their homes, and
many would not leave without a fight. Furthermore, the mini-countries
carved out of Iraq may be swallowed by their larger neighbors; the Shiite
area would be very attractive to Iran.

A second distasteful alternative is to support the consolidation of power
in the hands of a new secular strongman. This may bring peace of a sort,
but it would be a bitter result for the Iraqi people after their brief
taste
of freedom. Saddam Hussein was able to keep his politically, ethnically
and religiously divided state together only through nearly constant
repression; it seems unlikely that any successor could rule with a velvet
glove.

These are depressing prospects. The fact that we must consider them
underscores the caution that should be employed before deciding to go
to war. Still, given where we stand today, if the United States can find a
way to withdraw most of its troops over the next several years and leave
behind an Iraq that is not in a civil war, that is not a haven for Al Qaeda
and is not an immediate threat to its neighbors, history may well record it
as an odds-defying success.


Daryl G. Press and Benjamin Valentino are professors of government at
Dartmouth.